Padma Lakshmi Details "Excruciating" Rape, Explains Long-Term Silence

In a personal and harrowing essay for The New York Times on Tuesday, the long-time model and television host went into detail about getting raped at the age of 16.

Having first come forward about this trauma on Twitter as part of the #WhyIDidntReport movement, Lakshmi also wrote about her decision to remain silent over the years.

I Was Raped at 16 and I Kept Silent, reads the headline to Lakshmi's op-ed.

"The two of us had gone to a couple of parties. Afterward, we went to his apartment. While we were talking, I was so tired that I lay on the bed and fell asleep," she wrote of the sexual assault, which took place on New Year's Eve.

"The next thing I remember is waking up to a very sharp stabbing pain like a knife blade between my legs.

"He was on top of me. I asked, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'It will only hurt for a while.' 'Please don’t do this,' I screamed."

Continued Lakshmi:

"The pain was excruciating, and as he continued, my tears felt like fear. Afterward, he said, 'I thought it would hurt less if you were asleep.' Then he drove me home."

Lakshmi does not name the perpetrator.

She says he was 23 years old at the time and in college.

She adds that the two at the Puente Hills Mall in a Los Angeles suburb, where she worked after school at Robinsons-May and he worked at a high-end men's store.

According to Lakshmi, the rapist acted like a regular guy, a gentleman even... before he forcibly took her virginity without her consent.

However, she had a larger point to make by going public with this painful memory.